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Coke virtual thirst - update

After some mixed reactions to the announcement of the Coke Virtual Thirst contest (see also my previous article), Coke has responded by tweaking the contest a bit, and adding a 'cash' prize of 500.000 Linden Dollars. More importantly however, they have released a video on Youtube, responding to the critics. All I can say is - WELL DONE! A very informal yet concrete reply, showing they listened and understood what they were hearing. See below for the video. Also UPDATED.


Where they went wrong in their response to the Coke/Mentos hype, by going corporate on our asses, this time they show their human face.

It's a shame the legal complaints can't be addressed, but it does help having them explained in plain words.

It's nice to see big corporations moving up on the learning curve this quickly. 

Update to the update...
Csven, regular commenter here and (watch this space!) to our excitement soon to be found here as a contributor (as soon as we have found the time to harvest his past posts...), is less then enthousiast about the video response by Coke. An interesting discussion has arisen on his post, especially as David, the guy in the video, gives a more indepth response to the issues raised. Coke might still not "get it" entirely, but I still think this is a jump of lightyears ahead of how they handled social media only a year ago.

Posted by Stefan Kolle on May 4, 2007 12:09 PM |

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5 Comments

csven said:
I disagree; particularly with regards to the legal issues: http://blog.rebang.com/?p=1263
May 4, 2007 4:05 PM
C.C. Chapman said:
Legal issues/questions are always going to exist especially in large companies. As a member of the crayon team working on Virtual Thirst seeing this video and seeing how people are reacting to it and even posting back a video response in one case has made me very excited. New media does work.
May 4, 2007 5:41 PM
David Vanderpoel said:
I really appreciate the ongoing conversation on the issues that the videos addressed ... as a team member who was tasked to look into them in depth, I can vouch for the reality of the legal constraints that Mike references. They actually impact both the submission via blog question and the tax question. More depth in my reply to csven's blog, but suffice it to say that if we could have solved the tax burden question, we would have - it's Coca-Cola after all. Check out the tiny print contest rules of every international and most national contests, and you'll see the same thing. What I think makes this case different is the candor with which we're all discussing typical contest mechanics like this - and that's cool, especially if it yields a smarter way to run these things in the end.
May 4, 2007 6:09 PM
csven said:
As implied in my reply to David's comment on my blog, the underlying issue to me is: why were his *much* better explanations posted on my blog entry *not* included in the video response? This, btw, goes hand-in-hand with the first point I make.
May 4, 2007 7:31 PM
csven said:
"I still think this is a jump of lightyears ahead of how they handled social media only a year ago." That may be, but considering Coca-Cola has been dabbling in this technological space longer than most, I rather expected a bit more of them. To be fair though, I give them (and any company trying) kudos for taking some lumps during this period. It's a learning curve for everyone, but not everyone has a reputation on the line as they do.
May 5, 2007 4:53 PM

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